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After Father got the wild jungle cleared in the backyard of our Muthukur home with the help of two coolies for all of two days, our entire family took to assisting him in raising a kitchen garden.
Father bought many saplings from the local market and fetched some from Nellore. It was a wait of less than 3 months for us to see the results for ourselves. It happened to be the bounteous rainy season and our joy knew no bounds when the seeds and saplings we planted, some in our individual names, sprouted and yielded a rich harvest without resorting to much of any manure...just some cow dung which was available at a throwaway price in the neighborhood.
We reaped tender bhindis (ladyfingers), vankayalu (eggplants) and several species of gourds...snake, bitter, bottle, and cucumbers. The sad story of our huge crop of bottle gourds I described in an earlier post titled "Problems of Plenty":
In particular, I fondly recall a leafy vegetable that grew up in a sort of bush called "Tummi Aaku". It had small round green leaves and cute whitish flowers. It grew only in one month in the entire year...the Kartik month considered holy to Lord Shiv. And so its white flowers were supposed to be special as a Puja item for Shivjee. Google tells me this about it:
Leucas aspera : Drona Pushpam, Tummi
The tender leaves made for delicious entries into our soupy kandi pappu: (arhar dal tadka). We simply loved it. I didn't see this leaf after I left AP for Bengal. Nor in the Hyderabadi markets...maybe I didn't explore much in the famous Chintal Basti...for it used to be a rare leaf available only for a month at best.
But the plant that excited us most was the tomato sapling. We had never seen anything like it before. And as it grew leaves, we smelled them and found it exotic. And when it flowered, we used to relish their feather touch. And waited eagerly for the fruit. And they were greenish whitish. They then turned into frighteningly blood red tomatoes...even the name sounded appetizing.
Mother didn't know exactly what to do with them. And let us pluck them and cut them into four pieces each. And we gingerly tasted the quadrants. And they were a rich combo of sweet and sour. To kill the sour, we kids sprinkled some sugar on the cut pieces and their juice flowed into our watering mouths.
Mom then thought tomatoes would make a good rasam dish (sort of boiled and spiced soup). It was a riot. Next, mom tried putting the cut pieces into her sambar along with onions. That too was gobbled up. She then made a pacchadi (chutney) out of them. Anything with a hint of sour in it makes for a chutney for us. And it was mixed with rice and ghee and was delicious.
She then tried to make a tomato pickle. That was a disaster...apparently something went wrong with the standard pickle recipe and it grew fungus in two days.
Forty years later, my wife learned how to make a 3-day-pickle with tomatoes at KGP from her backyard neighbor, Mrs SH Rao. Apparently big tomato pieces have to be dropped into sizzling oil almost at its boiling point, in a kadai. The water in the tomatoes just evaporates into steam leaving just the pulp and skin. And then turn down the heat and keep stirring, pouring more and more oil with teaspoons midway. And keep the heat low for an hour or two till the oil overpowers the contents.
Meanwhile you grind into a paste some garlic (most important ingredient) and some dhaniya patta (coriander leaves) along with usual spices like chillies and stuff. And drop this paste into the tomato kadai and stir and wait till it mixes thoroughly and bring it down to cool.
The resulting dish is heavenly...except that the garlic gives it an almost non-veg tang...the red thing like blood, and oozing oil aromatic.
Whenever we had to undertake a long train journey lasting a couple of days, my wife used to make this chutney and fill up a bottle with it, and a couple of dozen or more paranthas to go with it (rather than the other way round). The strain of the journey was relieved by this meal partaken whenever we were in the mood...I miss it badly.
But the greatest adventure my mom undertook was to pluck the unripe green tomatoes and put them in her dal. The dish acquired a tang that persists to this day.
I am mentioning these ventures since ladies of mom's generation were very conservative in their cooking...whenever anyone suggests a new dish, there would be a derisive laugh like:
"Have you heard of anyone making chutney out of orange peels?"
Yes, my grannie on my Father's side did use to make it...but mom's mother looked down upon any dish her competitor on Father's side made as lowbrow good only for goats...and mom was fearsomely loyal to her mom...almost to the point of prestige.
And by and by we had this problem of plenty with tomatoes as well in our Muthukur kitchen garden...they were rotting in the stupendous bowl into which we plucked them. And mom used to ask us to throw them away to cattle; but we threw them at each other and enjoyed the boisterous fun.
After sixty years I came to know that this is the stuff of the Spanish La Tomatina Festival (beer included perhaps).
And Hyderabadis tried to ape it as usual:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bIxKoPeKbQ
And were summarily banned by the starkly forbidding Government of AP whose motto seems to be: 'See what the kids are doing and ban it!':
And were summarily banned by the starkly forbidding Government of AP whose motto seems to be: 'See what the kids are doing and ban it!':
Hyderabad will no longer witness any more tomato-squelching carnivals a la Spain's popular La Tomatino festival in the future.
The city that played host to one such festival in Jal Vihar, not too long ago, will not witness the upcoming La Tomatino festival that was scheduled to be held at People's Plaza this Saturday. These fests have drawn ire from all quarters, with people condemning the waste of tons of tomatoes for such a frivolous event, in a country full of starving people...
The city that played host to one such festival in Jal Vihar, not too long ago, will not witness the upcoming La Tomatino festival that was scheduled to be held at People's Plaza this Saturday. These fests have drawn ire from all quarters, with people condemning the waste of tons of tomatoes for such a frivolous event, in a country full of starving people...
...The
organizers had to face heavy losses due to government's ban. "We
already spent Rs 10 to 12 lakhs on ticket printing, booking the venue,
getting the necessary permissions etc. We had also made pools in which
guests can play, not just with tomatoes but with colors as well. We had
separate pools for girls, boys, families etc. "
...Justifying
the use of tons of tomatoes, he says, "We were going to use tomatoes
that are not edible and are on the verge of rotting. They cannot be
eaten anyway and are usually thrown by farmers before they go to waste.
These tomatoes were of no use to anyone. Sadly, there's nothing we can
do, now that the festival has been cancelled," he says.
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